How do you like that for a title, eh? But down to business, why would anyone, with half a brain, spend a gloriously sunny Sunday watching one of our bovine friends waddling around, keenly anticipating a fresh, steaming cow-turd being delivered?

Because you can win a car if it craps in the right spot.

Yes, you read that right. You win a car. If a cow craps in the right spot.

Don’t believe me? Then have a look at this:

Just when I thought I’d seen every bizarre game going, the French come up with a lotto game involving cow shit. You pay your 5 Euros, you take your ticket with the randomly assigned numbers, and you cross your fingers and hope that Lady Luck (or should that be Muck?) is with you.

There are many prizes to be won – TVs, day trips, home cinema gear etc – but the big draw is obviously the car. I could not, for the life of me, work out how they would justify this. How can a lotto game generate enough revenue, in a fairly small village, to cover the cost of a car AND turn a profit? How big is this field?

Also, as someone pointed out, what if the cow shit covers more than one grid? Will the winners have to car-share?

There are so many questions regarding this game, none of which were answered on the day. Do you want to know how they worked out the winners? Have a look at this board:

That’s cleared that up then hasn’t it?

No, not at all.

It looks like hell for someone with a morbid fear of Sudoku puzzles. I think whoever came up with this looks at the Enigma code machine as ‘child’s play’. I stared at it, and stared at it but it made less and less sense to me. But after 30 minutes I think I did start to see some sharks swimming around a sunken ship*.

We were told by the guy who deciphers this numerical-bollocks that we were ‘quite close’ to winning the day trip. What ‘quite close’ constituted with regards to all those numbers and a big steaming pile of cow faeces is anyone’s guess.

‘When weel zees cow take a sheet? Ah ‘ave been standing ‘eer for an hour!’

Seriously, how do you plan a game based on cow dumps? You wouldn’t want to have everyone standing around in the blazing hot sun, waiting for Daisy’s sphincter to deliver the goods, only for it to remain resolutely shut. I’m obviously showing up my glaring lack of knowledge in this area, and can only apologise (note to self, research cow’s bowel movements ASAP). I can only assume that the farmers have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Either that or they just pop them full of industrial strength laxatives, and then shove them out on to the field.

Note: electric wire – the only thing standing between the crowd, and a dowsing of cow-shit.

I was informed by my partner that there had been three rounds of this cow-poo fun during the day, and that they had sold three thousand tickets. So I then understood how they got the money for the car. We had arrived for the final round, not wanting to spend all the day watching this ‘entertainment’. Also because the final round was the round where you could win the car, and I wanted to win the car.

Who doesn’t want to win a car?

It dawned on me that narrating a game involving cows taking a dump was a horrible job. The DJ made this plain with his terrible dialogue. My French isn’t perfect, but when you’re complimenting a cow for running for approximately three seconds, you know you’re in trouble.

He perked up though, when the cow actually did have a dump:

Two men, looking at a cow turd.

There was further excitement caused when the turd in question seemed to be covering two grids – perhaps a car-share was indeed on the books. The chap who checks the poo, who had already called another chap to check the poo, then had to call in the top, top man to check the poo:

Now there are three of them – and one of them has a measuring tape.

They seemed to be some disagreement on the placement of said poo, so they then used a scientific technique known around the world as ‘Walking away and standing in the distance so that we look like we now what we are doing’. They also started using a measuring tape – you wouldn’t want to borrow that afterwards would you?

So if you stand there, and I stand here, we’ll look really professional so then hopefully, when they announce that the winner is the mayor, nobody will complain.

They finally made a decision and announced the winner. They read the numbers of the winning ticket out in reverse, thus making my already fragile mind, all-but spent from trying to make sense of the number-grid-from-hell, start to ooze out of my ears.

We didn’t win.

But, as Jim Bowen used to say, let’s have a look at what we could have won:

Stupid bloody cow, shitting in the wrong bloody place….

*That’s a joke from the 90s, remember those ‘Magic Eye’ posters? You stared at them for a while and then a fantastic image would slowly appear, depicting cats flying planes, or unicorns dancing in a golden stream. Or, if you are me, absolutely nothing except a load of squiggly lines.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw this: an Aldi in my new French village! Tucked away in amongst all the boulangeries, brasseries and other things beginning with ‘B’ was this delightful example of German budget-shopping. OK, so it’s actually ‘tucked away’ on a small industrial estate, between lots of trucks and a public toilet, but that doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, so I lied.

The interior is just a cosy as the equivalents in the UK i.e: not cosy at all, and in fact very, very grim. They do the job though. Another fantastic similarity to the UK stores is the legendary aisle of crap. So named, by myself and many other Brits, for the random assortment of goods that can be found there. The aisle of crap is always, always located in the middle of the store.

But as pictures paint a thousand words, let me take you on a tour of this cultural gem.

I will also add words too, so therefore will be painting more than a thousand words per picture. Aren’t I nice?

In case you didn’t know, that little bit of French means ‘low prices’. Note presence of an item of Star Wars merchandise. Aldi stores are regularly checked by upper-management in disguise*, if the aisle of crap is found to be lacking in at least 48 different items of Star Wars merchandise, the manager of the store in question is fired on the spot.

*Generally a middle-aged man in three quarter-length, khaki shorts, who parks his 4×4 in the ‘parent and child only’ parking space at the front of the store, to make sure he fits in.

Nothing screams ‘keeping up with trends’ like Halloween decorations in May. Place your bets now, will they still be here this October?

Books that nobody wants to buy are a common theme in the aisle of crap. In the UK it’s generally Lego Annuals that have had their ‘Exclusive’ Lego Figure stolen, and thus are doomed to gather dust till they are incinerated. Here it’s this interesting oddity, with a title that translates as ‘Football, Champagne and Evening Glitter‘. What does that even mean?

There’s a hint of sunshine in the sky, and you know what that means don’t you? SOLAR LIGHTS!!!!! There are approximately 4,567 variants of these per store. If the quantities ever dip below this figure then the manager of the store – they and they alone – must immediately restock the quantities. They generally do this while the queue – which had been snaking past the tills and up the aisles – heads towards the fire-exit.

Can’t decide between completing a jigsaw puzzle, or putting up some curtains? Well, why should you have to? Here at Aldi, you can do both. So don’t delay, come in today and within mere minutes/hours* you can be sat next to a window, while your freshly purchased curtains blow in the gentle breeze, knocking your half-finished jigsaw all over the floor.

*Dependant on queue-length

I want a treasure box for the kids’ toys, but I also want to strim the grass…if only the option of finding both of the answers to these quandaries was relatively close together…

Another feature of Aldis-worldwide are the cabinets crammed full of electrical items, with prices that have been plucked from the sky. They occasionally reduce the prices, with equal disregard for any kind of structure:

Yes, just stick a 50 Euro yellow sticker on it, that’ll shift it*

*I have never, ever seen anyone buy from one of these cabinets, here or in the UK. I suspect the manager doesn’t actually have a key.

The gap between the…cage/basket/thingies. This achieves two things. 1. It allows you to have a ten-minute stand off with a lady with blue-rinsed hair, who has approached the gap with her trolley at the same time as you, and will not budge to let you through first. and 2. Allows the goods to make the leap from pillows, to car accessories.

Can you think of anywhere else where sets of knives and bed-linen live together in perfect harmony, side-by-side, on their basket/cage/thingies? Oh lord why can’t we?*

*That noise you just heard was Paul McCartney picking up his phone to call his lawyers.

‘There’s a bit of space here boss, what should we do with it? Put some more shoes there? Or maybe some insoles?’ ‘Sod that, stick those game packs there for the kids’

‘Daddy, daddy!’ ‘Yes darling?’ ‘Why is that lady naked?’

Kill my partner, deck the garden or go on holiday..Kill my partner deck the garden or go on holiday? Choices, choices. Yes if you have ever been struggling with the difficult choice between upgrading your garden/burying your partner under the new decking or going on holiday/disposing of your partner in suitcases then come to Aldi. You can do both here!

And here, at the end of the mockery the legendary Aldi queue awaits you. I know what you are thinking ‘maybe if I just go for my 37th tour of the store all those people will go away’. But they won’t go away, and you know what? More people will come. But they won’t open another till, not till the queue reaches critical mass (90% of people in queue over 70 years of age, and the queue now has its own Facebook page).

And they want you to go for another tour of the store, because by that time your resolve will have been weakened. So that swimming pool for 15 Euros? The one you wouldn’t buy before? Your son’s constant whining will have finally eroded your will, and you will take it, from a cage/basket/thingy, from the aisle of crap, and put it in your trolley.

Then you take your place in the now even longer queue, and look at all the other unmanned tills.

Ever had one of those ideas that you immediately regret? Like taking a moped out for a spin in Greece, without taking out insurance? Or maybe accepting that drink from the slightly too friendly guy, that keeps touching you? Or maybe going along to that ‘it’s not timeshare’ presentation, with the promise of a free trip on a glass-bottomed-boat afterwards?

Or how about deciding to man a stall at a French brocante, and taking along your three and six year-old children? Doomed to failure that idea, a non-starter if you are seeking a peaceful, profitable day.

Regrets aside this is what brought us to the huge brocante in our home village of Aubigny sur Nere today. I don’t use the term ‘huge’ lightly either. The brocante dominates the place to such a degree that traffic has been shut down throughout and there’s nary an alley, or sidewalk, that doesn’t have somebody selling something.

It’s not long before the kids start to act up (2 micro-seconds to be exact) and so, after the requisite amount of paternal caring (3 micro-seconds to be exact) I bugger off and leave the kids with their mother, Grandma and Grandad, and take a look at what there is for sale.

There are lots, and lots, and lots of interesting items, the usual medley of guns, knives, rusty farm tools, knives, dead animals and more knives. The stand-outs for me, today, are the following seven deadly deals…

MUSCULAR GNOME-IN-A-THONG

This combines two of my least favourite things: gnomes and (male) thongs. What’s going on here? What message are you sending out if you buy this and display it on your lawn? If I bought this, the Peter Stringfellow of garden ornaments, and put it outside I wonder how long it would be before the gendarme came knocking at my door?

Also note his accessory: alarmingly phallic mushroom – I don’t think the plan here is for him to get his fishing rod out. Well, obviously that depends on your interpretation of the term ‘fishing rod’.

I think the plan is actually for the placement of these in the garden to attract ladies inside, with the suggestion of virility, muscularity and…well, a great big mushroom. The only slight hitch will come if it actually works, and the ladies knock on the door only to find a 9-stone-man with a stoop and halitosis…

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GOAT/COW/SOMETHING’S FEET LAMP

Yes, yes so I’m clearly not an expert on what foot comes off what animal as the title of this segment demonstrates. I don’t know about you, but my first thought if I cut off this animals legs and started wondering what to do with them, would probably not be ‘Hmm, you know what? They’d make a lovely lamp’. What the hell do you buy to complement this? A buffalo leg coffee table? Or maybe a set of four deer-leg coat-hooks (they actually had those, in case you wondered what happened to Bambi)?

If nothing it’s definitely a conversation starter. A conversation that would probably start with ‘What the f*ck’s that?’

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

NOT THE JOY OF SEX BOOK

My closest encounter with flagellation came in 2006, when I sat through the interminable The Da Vinci Code. You remember? That albino monk kept whacking himself when he thought he’d done something wrong. Or he might have enjoyed it, I forget which one.

Anyway, I didn’t realise it was actually a thing, or that there were even guide books for it. Needless to say, this was as close as I got, I really didn’t want to bump into one of my children’s teachers whilst ‘browsing’ Kinky Flagellations…t hat could open up a whole new world of problems. It would certainly make parent/teacher evenings interesting.

It’s nice that the producers of this book have thoughtfully included a warning that it is ‘not suitable for minors’. I would have thought the image on the front of the book, of the woman wearing S+M gear, and exposing her breasts would have done that job, but maybe that’s just me.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING DOG-LAMP

Fans of the seminal 1982 classic John Carpenter’s The Thing (to give it its full title) will recall the standout scene early on, where the husky dog that has seemed to be normal reveals its true colours, goes bat-shit crazy, and starts melting and attempting to assimilate the other dogs. If you could turn those melted dogs into a lamp, it would look like this.

At least, I think it’s supposed to be a lamp. My French isn’t yet at the stage where I can confidently pose the question ‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to be? Is it a lamp?’, but I’m getting there. Where does the light bulb go? In its mouth? Or are you supposed to finish that part off yourself? The mind boggles.

This…thing, won the award for the day of being, in my partner’s words, ‘The scariest thing I have ever seen’. It’s so like The Thing, in so many ways that I’m slightly regretting not buying it now. It looks like something trying (and failing) to look like something else, part-dog, part-lamp: all-horror. That being said, If I had have bought it I’m fairly certain that the kids would never enter the room that it was in…bah! Yet another reason to have purchased it!

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

An Obviously Stolen Road Sign

This lady had some balls on her I can tell you. Stood there, in plain view of any passing gendarmes – of which there were many – with a stolen road sign. Just consider, for a moment, the lost motorist, adrift betwixt Gracay and Vatan. ‘How far is it now my love?’ grey-haired Elsa says to her beau, Francois ‘I don’t know’ he says, taking off his glasses and peering at the mound of upturned soil ‘Someone’s stolen the f*cking road sign’.

As uninteresting as the actual item is, it still garnered inquisitive looks and questions from passers-by. My partner heard her setting her stall out, price-wise, when she responded to a query on the matter with ‘let’s look at 350 euros, then we can start to talk about it’.

She also tried, unsuccessfully, to photo-bomb my picture when I took it. Like I said, she had balls.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: NOT SURE, SHE DROVE OFF

COCK-SWITCH LAMP

‘Eh!’ said the lady who owned this ‘tasteful’ item when I took its picture ‘You take a photo of it, you buy it!’. I just hid behind my foreignness, gave her the thumbs up, and said it was ‘Tres bon!’.

When what I actually wanted to say was ‘How do you turn it on? By flicking the penis?’.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GORILLA-MECHANIC WITH BOTTLE OF WINE/OIL & ADJUSTABLE WRENCH THING

So I’ve no idea on this one. What’s the purpose, the point, or the message? The bottle clearly used to be a bottle of wine, but now it’s been re-covered to look like a bottle of oil. With nuts at the bottom of it.

The wrench is touching the bottle, so is it implying that the two go together? Mechanics use oil and wrenches a lot?

What’s the gorilla got to do with anything? He looks like he wandered in from another set. Oh, and if you can’t see he’s also eating a banana. Is this the view of mechanics in France, that they are apes?

Maybe it’s an actual depiction of a ‘Monkey-wrench’ or…you know what? I’m giving up on this one. I personally think it’s someone’s art degree effort, probably means something really deep and cool. For me it just looked really weird, and faintly insulting for some reason.

It’s Friday afternoon, I’ve just watched the trailer for the new Alien film: Alien Covenant.

It looks like standard Alien-fare, lots of scared people running away from aliens, wishing they had made better career choices. I dismiss it, thinking it will be a decent rental, and get on with my day.

Flash-forward (remember that tv series? dreadful stuff) to 2 a.m and I’m woken by my partner, who has heard a noise and thinks there’s something in the room.

We quickly realise that it’s not inside the room – it’s in the loft above our heads.

It’s clearly an animal, you can hear its little feet scampering to-and-fro.

I say little, but at 2 a.m everything takes on added menace.

I flash-back (maybe that will make a better tv series?) to the trailer for Ridley Scott’s latest, imagining face-huggers, and acid-blooded-beasties up there.

So when my partner offers to go and fetch the ladders, so I can go up there, in the dark, and find out what it is, my response is both immediate and gallant.

With its roots in the Middle Ages, Mehun-sur-Yèvre is known as one of the “Most beautiful detours of France”, and is famous for its history with Joan of Arc. A walk through the cobbled streets of this quaint town brought us the arresting sight of the Venetian Carnival, a two day festival where the participants parade through the town adorned in ever more elaborate masks and gowns.

The procession eventually made its way to the majestic ruins of the castle of King Charles VII, and it was here, on a gloriously sunny Sunday, that I managed to capture most, if not all, of the participants…

A very long, very windy road brought us to our destination on this intermittently sunny Labour Day Monday, Pierrefitte-es-Bois. A quiet, secluded little village, it’s so remote that even Wikipedia doesn’t have much to say about it, see for yourself:

It’s here that they hold the ‘goat fair’ something that we had been looking forward to. We were also slightly apprehensive, having spent the previous day at a geese fair that lacked any actual geese (bird flu had put a complete dampener on that). As you will see in the photographs, the village is picturesque and it’s a very popular day.

I found out, after taking this photograph, that the owner of the stall wouldn’t let my partner take a shot of one of his rounds of cheese. Ha! I got the entire stall without him noticing!

Seriously, how many mayors does one country need?

It was approaching dinner time when I saw this there was, sadly, a distinct lack of mashed potatoes in the vicinity.

Though they did appear to sell everything and anything at this fair, I believe these tractors were mainly for display purposes.

Look at the red and the green tractor, someone really loves those two, look at the shine on them, they’ve been well-looked after. I didn’t let my kids get anywhere near them.

Surprisingly these were the most popular venues at the fair: bars serving alcohol. There were three of them, all packed to the gills with drinkers ‘It’s not even 11 o’clock’ I said to my partner ‘What do you expect? This is France’ she countered.

Having recently tidied up my garden and evicted around a 100-or-so snails I now realise the folly of that move: I should have brought them here and cooked them, they were queuing up for them!

Yes, if trying to eat the rubbery little critters on their own is not appetising for you don’t worry – there are a variety of ways to eat these freaky-looking things.

A mobile Wacky Warehouse, the slogan should read: ‘Hell: Now with wheels’

This is basically a dressed up pound shop. Kids pay 5 Euros to hook loads of ducks, they can then choose from a wide variety of tat; plastic guns, plastic swords, plastic gun-swords, plastic slinkies. Each of these gems costs upwards of 35 Cents for the stallholder to purchase.

Note poor sad fishy in the middle, he knows his days are numbered.

The Gendarmes, eyeing up the shooting range, and contemplating showing the locals how good they are. I must admit, I felt slightly nervous taking this photograph; those guys are armed to the teeth.

YES! We actually have goats at the goat fair! Take that no-geese geese fair!

Yes, alright so there are only 12 of them, but IT STILL COUNTS!

More tractors, I believe you could actually buy these ones. Not in our price-range though, we were, after all, still getting our breath back from being quoted 60 Euros for one memory foam pillow at the memory foam stall (I told you they sold everything).

I love this steeple, in case you are wondering ‘Why’s he taken the same photo twice, but from slightly different angles?’.

‘Why are you taking a picture of the signs?’ my partner asked me as we headed back home. ‘It gives people a sense of location, and also adds a bit of local flavour to the photographs’ I replied, somewhat unconvinced myself.

For the uninitiated a car boot sale is an English tradition where people take their cars, full of things that they no longer want, to a venue where they then display it from said car’s boot in the hopes that it will sell.

A Brocante is exactly the same but set in France, not the UK. There are, however, several differences, I will do my best to explain these.

START TIME

UK: 3.45 a.m (sometimes earlier)

France: After coffee + croissants and having read the paper, walked the dog, chatted to the neighbours, had another coffee and cut the grass a.m (sometimes later)

ARRIVAL TIME OF FIRST CUSTOMERS:

UK: 2.55 a.m (sometimes earlier)

France: Generally just after it’s opened (unless the croissants haven’t been cooked in sufficient quantities, then everybody is delayed).

CHANCES OF HAVING ALL THE CONTENTS OF YOUR CAR BOOT STOLEN BEFORE YOU EVEN HAVE A CHANCE TO GET THEM OUT OF YOUR CAR TO SELL THEM:

UK: high

France: Low

IF YOU SUCCESSFULLY GET YOUR ITEMS OUT OF YOUR CAR BEFORE THEY ARE STOLEN, WILL PEOPLE HAGGLE WITH YOU WHILE YOU ARE UNPACKING AND PAW AT YOUR THINGS, EVEN IF IT IS DARK*?

UK: Yes

France: Unlikely

*They bring torches

LOCATION:

UK: Always, always close to a sports facility. Either a rugby pitch, football pitch, or cricket field. I suspect this is because the organisers detest sport, and so hope to destroy the pitches, so they are unsuitable to be played on.

France: Side of a road, through the main street of a town, near a lake, up a tree, on the roof of a building. The French will hold a brocante ANYWHERE.

WEATHER

UK: If it isn’t wet, cold, windy and/or snowing the English will refuse to hold a car boot sale.

CHANCES THAT 95% OF THE GOODS BEING SOLD WILL BE RUSTY AGRICULTURAL TOOLS:

UK: Low

France: Extremely high

DEAD ANIMALS?

UK: Not many

France: Loads

WILL FOOD BE AVAILABLE TO BUY?

UK: Yes

France: Yes

WOULD YOU EAT IT?

UK: Yes

France: Yes

COME ON NOW, BE HONEST, WOULD YOU EAT IT?

UK: No

France: Yes

WILL THERE BE MANY OF THESE VANS THERE:

UK: No

France: Every other vehicle will be one of these.

IS HAGGLING ACCEPTABLE:

UK: If you don’t haggle they chase you off the field with pitchforks, screaming ‘Not one of us, not one of us!’

FRANCE: Not as prevalent, you will receive some glassy-eyed stares when you attempt to negotiate a better price for Spiderman AND Batman’s secret hideouts. Also they may hide behind the excuse: ‘I’m selling it for my daughter, and she said I can’t sell it for any less than 35 euros’.

IS THAT WOMAN REALLY SELLING USED UNDERPANTS?

UK: Yes

France: Yes

No, it’s not a music festival, it’s a brocante. Note model of van in bottom right corner.

France: ‘Who is Titeuf?’ ‘Is that meat?’ ‘Why are there so many dead animals?’ ‘Who buys all this rusty agricultural crap?’ ‘But I don’t need a picture of Jean Claude Van Damme’ ‘Wow, you people really like ashtrays don’t you?’

WHAT HAPPENS AT CLOSING TIME?

UK: A huge group of people – up to 75% of those still in attendance – who have had no intention of paying for anything wait with baited breath for the remaining sellers to give up, look at all their unwanted items and offer it for free. There then occurs the ‘attack of the locusts’ as the group, en masse, descend upon the boot of the defeated seller. They can strip a car boot of all its remaining goods in five seconds flat. After the dust has settled all that will remain will be the bewildered seller, his underpants and, if he’s lucky, his car.

France: The remaining people will slowly head home, many of them may hitch lifts with the sellers as everybody knows everybody. They will then add up the day’s takings, put all their unsold animal heads and rusty farm implements back in storage until the next brocante. Which will be in a week’s time.

So we’ve been living in Aubigny-sur-Nère for just over two months now and I thought it was high time that I shared a few shots of this beautiful place.

For a bit of history on the town I will defer to that esteemed internet resource, Wikipedia, which I will now shamelessly copy and paste from:

Aubigny-sur-Nère is a commune in the Cher department in the Centre region of France. An area of forestry and farming surround this small, light industrial town, situated in the valley of the river Nère. It is some 30 miles (48km) north of Bourges at the junction of the D940, D924, D30 and the D923 roads.

First known as Albinacum in Roman times, the commune was established as a royal town in 1189 by Phillip II. This is the location by which the Duke of Gordon gets his honorific title, as the Duke of Aubigny. In 1419, John Stewart of Darnley, a junior member of the House of Stuart, arrived in France with a large contingent of Scottish soldiers, to fight for Charles VII. He was awarded many titles, among them the Lordship of Aubigny. The family stayed here for 400 years.

Aubigny is a common tourist destination for Scots and others from the United Kingdom. The commune is very attached to the Auld Alliance due to its 400 years of French-Scottish history and is the only place in France that still celebrates this long association each year, on Bastille Day. It is twinned with the Scottish town of Haddington East Lothian.

You still with me? Did you get all that? Because I will be asking questions at the end of the photograph section!

It’s difficult to stop once you get started taking photographs here, there’s that much that is appealing to the eye you see. It particularly ‘pops’ when the weather is with you, as it was when I captured it in the following pictures.

I hope you enjoyed looking at these shots of my town, so now, when I go on about how happy I am living here, you may be able to appreciate the reasons why.

I’ve been working a lot on the garden this week. O.K, so I’ve worked on it three days in a row, but that’s a lot for me. The kids have loved it because each day I’ve managed to unearth treasures for them, simple things, but that’s all you need to make light enter a child’s eyes.

Little blue glass stones, very popular with both my kids, I somehow managed to find an odd number of these. You know what that means don’t you? An odd number of treasures + an even number of kids = all-out war. Thankfully blood was not spilt (that day) as I also managed to find a Centime in the garden too. If you don’t know what one of those is, then I will enlighten you. Prior to the Euro becoming the standard currency used for payment of goods and services in France, they had the Franc. This was then divided into Centimes. So quite a rare item, or so I told my son in an effort to get the red glow to leave his eyes. It worked.

Today, my final day of gardening (I hope) has yielded the best – in my eyes anyway – find of the whole endeavour:

A lovely old silver whistle (not sure it’s actually made from silver, or just silver-coloured) bearing the legend ‘THE ACME CITY MADE IN ENGLAND’. So I’ve travelled all this way, moved house and home, and found a whistle forged in my own country waiting for me in my new back-yard.

It’s still got dirt on the inside, and so it’s actual whistling days may be behind it. I’m also not sure I want to wrap my lips around something that’s been sat in the dark for so long. What will happen if I do blow it though? Will it call upon all the ex-pats in France? Will they all arrive en masse to give aid to their fellow Brit, fearing for his safety? Is it magic? If I blow in it will a Yorkshire Genie appear, granting me three wishes but only after he’s finished his cup of tea and had a nap? Or maybe it will open a doorway into a magical England, where we haven’t voted to leave the European Union (I wish!)?

Who knows, maybe I will blow into it and see one day, or maybe I’ll just leave it on display. A little bit of the UK, that was waiting patiently for me to find it…

I did blow in to it in the end, nothing happened, except the kids started laughing and asked ‘What’s that farting noise daddy? Have you done a fart?’. Also now my mouth is full of dirt.

Hello my friends, you may not have heard of me, but my name is Francois, Francois the fisherman. I am very happy today, even happier than when I caught the biggest fish of my life. OK it was made out of straw, and covered in glitter, but it still counts.

Why am I so happy you ask? Well because today is the day of the carnival, a celebration for me and all my life works, that takes place every year. I can’t say I recall last year’s though, but then as I am only 8 days old I wouldn’t, would I? I tried asking last year’s famous fisherman what I should do but, try as I might, I can’t find him.

Also when I did ask people they ran away screaming ‘Mummy, mummy it’s come to life ahhhh!!’ Except they said that in French of course. Ahem.

I look happy don’t I? Pity that I couldn’t have been in front of a more suitable mode of transportation for my photograph, say a boat for instance, as opposed to a 2010 Renault Kangoo. Still, I can’t complain, I’m being taken round the town followed by my wonderful fans. I’d give them a round of applause, but I’ve got no hands.

Or feet.

It really makes fishing quite a task.

But I digress.

Look at my incredible parade of followers, on this great day. I’m being taken through the village of Aubigny Sur Nere, France, and as you can see the kids have really made an effort to impress me. Here you can see they have dressed up as lobsters. I love lobsters.

There are also some seagulls too. I don’t know who told them to dress up as seagulls. Yes, yes they are associated with the sea, but as far as I’m concerned they are rats with wings. Rats with wings that steal your chips and take a crap on your shoulder after they’ve stolen your chips.

But I won’t let that put a dampener on my day, lord no.

Another great bunch of youngsters, all dolled-up up to celebrate ME! I think they are dressed as starfish…or maybe squids with stars on them? I’m not 100% on this one.

Notice the bell in the possible-starfish’s hand? That’s to let everyone know they are in the presence of greatness – ME! Francois the fisherman!

Here we have some more of my fans, dressed up so smartly for the occasion, with lots of different elements from the sea on display. Look at the parents however – different story there. So sombre, so dark, why anyone would think they were going to a funeral instead of a carnival, HA HA!

Notice the packed walkways? Everyone is here to see me, I feel so blessed! What a day to be me, Francois the fisherman! We seem to be heading to the park now, I wonder what other delights they have in store for me? A song from some scantily clad mermaids perhaps…

(actually mermaids smell ghastly, and they can’t survive on dry land for more than an hour – 61 minutes + and they explode, trust me, you do not want to clean up mermaid guts).

Ahh, a fitting end to the carnival, they have made me a throne! OK, so it’s not a very tall one, and it seems to be made of hay, but I will allow it.

Not sure about my new followers dress-code though, not very ‘sea-worthy’.

Now what in blue blazes is that one doing down there? Now hang on a minute…